Many vending machines and other machines use a bill validator to validate bills and transfer a bill into a cash box. Gaming machines also use a bill validator. Gaming machines, and other machines, come in different styles. These different styles of machines include upright machines, slant top machines, and bar top machines. Each of these machines includes a bill acceptor which receives bills and passes them along a substantially horizontal path to a cash box and past a bill validator. In each of these machines, the bill validator has a substantially vertical axis. The assembly in which the bill validators are housed can generally be mounted in two ways and are generally referred to as “downstackers” or “upstackers”.
In some applications, such as in a gaming machine, the bill validator also takes tickets which include printed material on one surface. Tickets need to be received in a particular orientation so that, the information on the tickets can be read at a later time. Tickets and cash bills are transported and stacked in a cash box after being validated by the bill validator. From time to time, the cash box is replaced with a new cash box. Autoreaders are used to recount the money and tickets within the cash box after the full cash box has been replaced with an empty cash box. Autoreaders can count the contents of the box, including the tickets if the tickets are all in a particular orientation. Counting of the cash boxes is slowed considerably if the tickets have to be flipped from an unreadable position to a readable position. Flipping tickets during counting wastes time and may involve increased labor for a mundane task.
The tickets generally are only accepted when presented or inserted into the bill validator in one of two ways. One orientation is face up and right and the other is face up and left. This assures that when the tickets are stacked in a bill stacker, they will be of the same orientation for reading. Therefore, the orientation of the bill validator is critical for different types of bill validators associated with different types of cash boxes. The orientation of the bill validator is critical for allowing the tickets to be read, and transported to a stacker in a proper orientation when placed on the stack in a cash drawer.
Bill validators generally have two sets of sensors for detecting currency and bills. One set is on one side of the narrow opening through which bills and tickets are passed and the other set is on the other side of the narrow opening through which the bills are stacked. Currently, if a technician needs to replace a bill stacker, the technician must determine the orientation and then set jumpers or dip switches on the device to enable the proper bank of sensors. On a given casino floor, there may be many different brands and different models of bill validators. Each brand and model of bill stacker may have a different jumper or dip switch setting. Potentially, there may be mounds of user manuals that need to be kept either as a paper copy or as a stored copy that need to be consulted to determine the proper dip switch or jumper settings for a particular model. So, the technician must not only know the orientation but must also determine the settings, such as dip switch or jumper positions, that must be properly positioned to enable the proper sensor or set of sensors to detect tickets and bills. Currently, there is a high probability of error in such systems. When setting a number of dip switches or positioning jumper wires, only one of the many needs to be out of place and the desired sensors will not work. In addition to this, when there are many types of bill validators, the technician needs to carry or have access to the various manuals since the dip switch or jumper settings are different between makes and models of bill validators.